Sticky situation: Thieves make off over $150,000 worth of maple syrup

The Mexuscan Cargo company is offering a reward for anyone who can help them find out where a rather large amount of maple syrup has gotten to.

The offer comes off the back of a theft of nearly 13,000 bottles of the sweet syrup, amounting to about $150,000 ($134,000) worth of the product.

The robbery took place on August 8th, when a shipping container was filled up with the bottles at the company's storage yard in Montreal's Trudeau airport in Quebec, before being loaded onto a truck and driven through the gates at the facility.

Alfredo Monaco, vice-president of Mexuscan, said that the shipment had been destined for Japan before it was taken, but given that it was branded for the large Costco wholesale chain, it would be easily spotted by the public if someone was to try and offload the syrup.

"You can’t sell this at the corner store. People will know what it is, so it’s probably harder to get rid of on the black market," said Monaco.

Monaco added that while the syrup was insured, they will still be taking a hit of over $50,000 as a result of the theft. He also stated that the company do take precautions with all the products they ship, which are mainly high-value goods such as alcohol, but would be stepping up security after they were also robbed of a shipment of hockey gloves at the same facility just two months ago.

According to the Financial Post, this is not the first crime of this nature in Canada in recent times either, after police managed to dismantle a criminal group which stole $18 million worth of maple syrup from warehouses between August 2011 and July 2012.

Speaking to CBC News, Caroline Cyr, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, said that while they do make the news, thefts of this type are a rarity.

"It's not fun to learn about that, because a lot of producers have [contributed]. And for someone to just steal it? For sure it's not a good news."